Smell Festival: Olfactory Culture in Bologna and the History of Its Exhibitions, Workshops and Performances

“We truly believe that perfume can become culture, rather than simply entertainment.”

— Francesca Faruolo, founder and artistic director

Gathering to discover perfumes and gathering to think about smells together overlap, but are not quite the same. Smell Festival is an event devoted to olfactory culture and the art of perfume that began in Bologna, Italy, in 2010. It has created a place not only to smell perfumes, but also to put smells into words, turn them into artworks and consider their relationships with cities and bodies.

Its venues have included the music museum, the modern art museum, bookshops and various cultural centers around the city. There, scent is treated first not as a product on a shop floor, but as an experience to share and a material for expression. Following the founder’s path and the festival’s past programs gives us a concrete sense of what learning about smell can involve.

Key Information
Creating a Local Place to Learn About Scent
1. From an Interest in Courses Abroad to a Project in Bologna
2. About 100 People at the First Bookshop Event
Choosing Themes and Inviting People From Different Fields
1. Gathering Questions and Potential Collaborators Throughout the Year
2. From Artistic Experiments to Dialogue With Researchers
Learning to Smell Through Exhibitions, Workshops and Performances
A Purpose Different From a Trade Fair, With Participation Arrangements Varying by Edition
From a Festival to Year-Round Learning
1. Connecting Encounters in Bologna With Courses and Creative Work
2. Activities Confirmable in 2026 and Information About a Future Edition
References

Key Information

Name: Smell – Festival dell’Olfatto (Smell Festival / Festival of Smell)
First held: 2010, Bologna, Italy
Founder and artistic director: Francesca Faruolo
Organizer: The cultural association Orablu
Core activities: Talks, exhibitions, workshops, performances and demonstrations exploring olfactory culture and the art of perfume
Official archive: Smell Festival
Related educational activities: Smell Atelier

The festival examples presented here are based primarily on records from 2010–2019. Related activities in 2026 and information about a future edition are addressed separately at the end of the article.

Creating a Local Place to Learn About Scent

From an Interest in Courses Abroad to a Project in Bologna

Faruolo had worked in communications and cultural programming. As a freelancer responding to clients’ needs, she began to want a project she could develop from her own interests as well. She was particularly drawn to the world of perfume and smell, reading every available book she could find and seeking opportunities to learn more.

“I wanted to enroll in courses abroad, but traveling was difficult.”

— Francesca Faruolo

She then thought of using her professional experience to organize courses in the city where she lived. The idea eventually expanded into a festival where many people could deepen and share their experiences of smell. Work on the project began in 2008 and led to its first edition in 2010.

Encounters with works by Jean-Claude Ellena and Serge Lutens were also among the things that first drew her in. Wearing perfume and being deeply moved by its expression were not the same thing for her. Discovering creations that resonated with her own aesthetic sensibility prompted her to move her working life toward scent.

About 100 People at the First Bookshop Event

The first event, held at a bookshop in central Bologna in May 2010, invited Rosalia Cavalieri, who had written a book about smell, and fragrance creator Vero Kern. It brought someone who thought about smelling and someone who made scents together to speak in the same place.

At the time, Faruolo and her colleagues had no connections with local perfume enthusiasts and did not know how many people would come. In the event, about 100 people gathered and filled the seats. It was the moment when an idea in her mind became a gathering with a real audience.

“We were starting from zero, so that evening really was our first meeting with an audience we had yet to discover.”

— Francesca Faruolo, on the first event in 2010

The early festival used the music museum and archaeological museum as its principal venues while extending into bookshops, tearooms, cultural associations and perfume shops. Its structure connected Bologna’s cultures of knowledge and food with everyday places for socializing, creating ways to encounter smell throughout the city itself.

Choosing Themes and Inviting People From Different Fields

Gathering Questions and Potential Collaborators Throughout the Year

Faruolo’s programming differs from an approach that begins by lining up products for exhibition. Throughout the year, she notes topics that attract her, things she would like to experience, people she would like to meet, and companies and institutions she would like to involve. She then considers feasibility and secures contacts and funding. It is the work of reshaping personal curiosity into a program in which others can participate.

The 2014 theme was “Sogni” (Dreams). It was chosen less as an escape from reality than as a way to draw out the imagination needed to face a changing reality. Giving creators the same question need not produce the same scent in response. It left room for each person to give form to a dream through their own techniques and expression.

“Performing Scents” in 2015 shifted the focus to relationships between smell and the body, movement and actions on stage. The 2016 theme, “Magiae Naturalis,” was inspired by Giovanni Battista della Porta’s work of the same name, linking the exploration of nature with the history of distillation and perfume-making.

“Ricreazione” in 2018 adopted ideas of recess and play. Mixing, experimenting and noticing chance combinations can open a path to knowledge. In contrast, “Atmosfere” (Atmospheres) in 2019 asked how smells shape the emotional qualities of places. Even within the same field of olfactory culture, each edition changed the frame of inquiry.

From Artistic Experiments to Dialogue With Researchers

In 2019, Faruolo explained that while poetic inspiration and art had featured strongly in the early years, participation by researchers and university lecturers had grown in the preceding few years. This change in the program reflected the expansion of research on smell across several disciplines.

One company supporting this development was Moellhausen, which works with fragrance ingredients and fragrance development. It supported the festival’s attention to smell in general, rather than perfume alone. Rather than reducing art and science to a single explanation, the festival created a place where each could approach an often-overlooked sense through its own methods.

Learning to Smell Through Exhibitions, Workshops and Performances

2014: Turning Dreams Into Scents and Unpacking How They Are Made

In the music museum’s exhibition “May It Come True,” five creators translated dreams into scents. They were Giuseppe Caruso, Martino Cerizza, Antonio Gardoni, Giovanni Padovan (in Japanese) and Giovanni Sammarco. Invisible works joined the books and musical instruments in the museum’s rooms.

“The extremely simple exhibition aims to direct visitors’ attention to the olfactory compositions themselves.”

— Francesca Faruolo, on the exhibition “May It Come True”

Faruolo emphasized a simple presentation that focused attention on the olfactory compositions themselves. Visitors approached the works through smelling, rather than merely reading their decorative presentation. This arrangement also made it possible to compare the different answers that emerged from a single theme.

The same year’s “Esercizi di stile” workshop was designed around Cerizza deconstructing a dream-inspired fragrance and reconstructing it with participants. Time to smell the finished work was offered separately from time to trace how it came into being. There was also a children’s workshop making wordless “scent books” from paper, flour and spices. This reveals an approach that did not limit access to olfaction to people who already knew about perfume.

During the same period, a taste-and-smell walk with 10 stops at the city’s markets and eateries was also planned. It traced food smells, including bread and coffee, as part of the city’s culture. Bologna’s local character was not added like a background photograph; it became something to learn about through smelling.

2015: An Installation Using Materials From Bees and a Demonstration Set to Music

“Mellifero #1” in 2015 was a work combining an installation and a performance, created by Dacia Manto for the foyer of MAMbo. Curated by Maria Livia Brunelli, it offered a place to consider the activities of bees and pollinating insects through materials that included smells.

It featured a suspended structure evoking a beehive and a table gathering botanical and entomological materials and organic matter. The opening performance was designed to transform it into a small laboratory where the smells of wax, resin and honey intermingled. Beyond perfumes that imitate nature, the processes through which natural materials take form and give off smells were themselves used as means of expression.

The music museum also programmed “Indigo: the complete experience” by Spyros Drosopoulos. In this demonstration, the concept of Baruti’s “Indigo” perfume was deconstructed and reconstructed to the music of Lubomyr Melnyk. By presenting a fragrance’s composition over time, the program brought music and perfume-making into the same space.

Comparing Materials, Kōdō and Training in Putting Smells Into Words

In another workshop in 2015, Sammarco explored differences in frankincense, sandalwood and jasmine arising from their origins and extraction methods. Rather than simply learning ingredient names, participants could smell the differences among materials described by the same name.

Souhitsu Hachiya of the Shino school was also invited for a talk and a hands-on workshop on the Japanese art of kōdō. Collaboration with university researchers and Nipponica, which introduces Japanese culture, provided an opportunity to encounter the practice of “listening” to incense. The program also moved beyond the framework of Western perfume to explore the forms that different cultures have given to the sense of smell.

Roberto Dario’s workshop focused on training participants to perceive the smells encountered in daily life and perfumery, and to describe their characteristics appropriately. Knowing names alone is not enough to share what the nose perceives. Olfactory education also encompassed ways of directing attention and expressing the differences one sensed.

2019: Considering the Atmosphere of Places and Smells on Stage

The main venue for the tenth edition was Palazzo Isolani on Via Santo Stefano. Philosopher Tonino Griffero, theater director Barbara Pia Jenič, food researcher Elena Mancioppi and computer scientist Rossano Schifanella were among those who approached places and smells from different directions.

Investigating a city’s sensory characteristics through social media and telling stories through scent in a theater were brought together under the same question of “atmosphere.” While retaining perfume exhibitions and composition workshops, the festival widened its view toward how people experience the spaces in which they live.

The account of Jenič’s work preserved on the festival’s official website explains that simply making a stage smell pleasant is not enough to constitute direction. The idea is that smell must be incorporated into the dramatic structure itself, taking into account the subjectivity of olfaction and differences in meaning across cultures. In “Gothic Windows,” a past production discussed in the account, the action of squeezing an orange before a thirsty character was linked to the orange aroma reaching the audience. This does not mean that the production was staged in Bologna in 2019; it is an example illustrating the invited director’s methods.

A Purpose Different From a Trade Fair, With Participation Arrangements Varying by Edition

Smell Festival has also included perfume-brand exhibitions and opportunities to meet creators. Its central aim, however, was to open olfactory culture to non-specialists and share learning and expression. Assuming that it has the same participation arrangements as an industry exhibition primarily devoted to buying and business meetings would misrepresent it.

At the same time, being open to the public is not the same as everything being free and requiring no reservation. For example, “Mellifero #1” at MAMbo in 2015 was free, but events at the music museum required a ticket purchased on the day, and some practical workshops carried an additional fee or required advance booking.

In 2018, events were advertised as open to the public and free unless otherwise specified, while weekend events at the music museum required a €5 day ticket. In 2019, the basic day ticket at Palazzo Isolani was listed at €5. These are past conditions for the respective years, not a current price list. Anyone considering attending needs to read both the information for the particular edition and the notices for individual programs.

From a Festival to Year-Round Learning

Connecting Encounters in Bologna With Courses and Creative Work

Some people first became interested in scent at the festival and later moved on to systematic study. Smell Atelier connects that interest with year-round courses and creative work. The addition of a base in Verona in 2017 also deepened its relationship with members.

The celebration in Bologna, educational bases including Verona, and the association of members from different places are not the same thing. Each plays a different role in meeting, learning, creating and presenting work. The activity also expanded by nurturing places where interested people could take a next step beyond a temporary event in the city.

Activities Confirmable in 2026 and Information About a Future Edition

On September 5–6, 2026, Smell Atelier held the sixth “A Night in Perfumeland” at Bologna’s music museum. Students who had completed courses in natural perfumery and composition using synthetic ingredients in 2025 presented their works, which were assessed by two juries: members and professionals. Faruolo, Joseph Caruso and others announced the results.

This event demonstrates the continuation of related educational and creative activities. However, as of October 2026, information about Smell Festival itself available on its official website centers on the tenth edition in 2019, and dates for a future edition cannot be confirmed. We cannot conclude that the annual festival still takes place in the same form, so past May dates should not simply be used to plan a visit.

Smell Festival has left more than a gathering for people who already know perfume well. It is a place to compare materials, search for words, move the body and consider relationships between cities and artworks. An interest that begins with a bottle of perfume can expand into culture and ways of learning. This activity has demonstrated that path through actual programs.